Friday, September 30, 2016

Classical case of projection: PACE trial's Peter White accuses Prof Stark and Levin and Matthees, Kindlon and Maryhew of scientific misconduct. And at the same time he still claims that 22% of patients with this disease recover due to CBT and GET; Pinocchio Psychiatry at its best. That and More in today's Guardian; article by Peter himself:

"Our research, and that of our colleagues in this field, has attracted its fair share of criticism. Some campaigners have even called for the research to be stopped, the findings retracted, and CBT and GET abandoned completely as they cause harm. One recent focus of criticism has been whether CBT and GET can actually bring about recovery or remission from the illness, not just reduce the symptoms. And by recovery we mean recovery from a patient’s present episode of illness – which is not necessarily the same as being cured, as someone might fall ill again.

To address this we did another test on the data, and found that 22% of people could be considered as recovered with either CBT or GET. Though not a large proportion it was about three times more than the recovery rates achieved by the other two treatments. Other studies showed similar proportions recovering after CBT.

"In the latest step in this saga, a blog
that hasn’t gone through the rigours of scientific peer-review, or being published in a journal claims that CBT and GET are not as effective as we reported. The authors got their figures by tweaks such as increasing the pass-grade for what counted as recovery, and excluding patients who had reported themselves as “much better”."

PS: A review of the PACE trial by Vink, that has gone through the rigours of scientific peer-review, and was published in a Medical journal found that CBT and GET are INEFFECTIVE, aka a NULL effect. You can read the excellent PACE trial review here

PS 2: I hope that somewhere in the UK there is still a psychologist who hasn't gone to sleep to give PACE trial's Peter White emergency CBT to cure his false Therapy beliefs and turn him into an honest psychiatrist

Saturday, September 24, 2016

"The role of Professor Peter Denton White OBE
In 2004, Professor Peter Denton White was awarded an OBE for “services to medical education”;
notices circulating at the time proclaimed him as leading the research into “CFS/ME” and said his OBE was “a well-deserved honour and acknowledgement of his contribution to work on CFS/ME”.

He was born in November 1952: aged only 64, he suddenly retired from clinical practice just before he was compelled by an order of the court to release the raw data from the PACE trial, so any
investigation by the General Medical Council for alleged professional misconduct is unlikely to be
pursued, but is he guilty of misfeasance in public office?

According to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) website, misfeasance in public office is a cause of
action in the civil court against the holder of public office, the allegation being that the office-holder
has misused or abused their power: such misuse or abuse is an affirmative act that causes harm to
another party without reasonable justification. The NHS is a State body as it provides public health
care, so this matter is one in which the public has a significant interest.

Facts to be considered
1. Peter White has used his own money, as well charitable money and public money, in order to
lobby support for his belief that ME/CFS is a psycho-behavioural disorder that can be
overcome through “cognitive restructuring” and graded aerobic exercise
2. he has egregiously used large sums of public money (£250,000) to prevent the disclosure of
data that would falsify his belief
3. for nearly 30 years, he has ignored evidence that disproves his belief, including evidence from
his own trials
4. he has failed to correct errors of fact after being alerted to them
5. he has consistently failed to disclose significant financial, institutional and ideological
conflicts of interest
6. he has been in breach of his NHS contractual obligations in that he has persistently ignored
mandatory directives and has wilfully encouraged other clinicians to do the same
7. as a consequence of his actions:
 money which should have been used for biomedical research into the aetiology of
ME/CFS has been diverted to fund studies into therapies which were already known
to be ineffective and even harmful
 patients have been stigmatised as sociopaths and malingerers who refuse to accept
they have a behavioural disorder
 patients have been denied financial support from private insurers for whom Peter
White and his colleagues work (for example, he was Chief Medical Officer for the
giant re-insurer Swiss Re and was also CMO to Scottish Provident) and from the" ...

Friday, September 9, 2016

Statement: Disclosure of PACE trial data under the Freedom of Information Act
http://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/items/smd/181216.html

The statement which we should have issued

We sincerely apologize for not releasing the data earlier. We now realise this was a big mistake; even more so as the trial was funded with more than 5 million pounds of public money and therefore the public has a right to see the raw data.We also sincerely regret ignoring our own NULL effect and making it make it look as if our two favorite treatments ie CBT and GET are moderately effective; it was a major oversight on our side to suggest that 22% of people recovered courtesy of CBT and GET;We now realise that we have been exposing people with this disease for at least 25 years to ineffective and harmful treatments and that hundreds of thousands of patients have been severely harmed by especially GET;We also regret decades of ridiculing patients with a debilitating neuro immune disease and pretending it to be a functional disorder, MUS, PPS or words to that effect;The only function that served was making ourself important so that we could pretend to be experts of this disease and that no one would listen to the patient;We realize that we cannot make up for all the mistakes we have made over the last 25 years including coming up with the Oxford criteria so that we could select patients who do not have the disease but label them as if they do, in an effort to improve the effectiveness of our treatments;A very nice side effects of these treatments for this disease was that no doctor will take a disease seriously or ask critical questions if we pretend that it can be cured with behavioral and exercise treatment;We realize that we have not only let the patients down but also our Universities and our Medical colleagues worldwide; we fully understand that after 25 years of being very economical with the truth and spinning our results people will call us the British Diederik Stapel;The only way we can make up for our mistakes is by resigning from all our posts with immediate effect and together with our universities and sponsors, we will donate 5 Million £££ ie the equivalent spent on the PACE trial to proper biomedical research as done by the Norwegian oncologists and for example by Stanford's Professor Ronald Davis in an effort to get patients with this debilitating disease effective treatments ASAP;Our Biopsychosocial model as an explanation for this disease will go down in the history of Medicine and Great Britain as one big ego trip and we sincerely apologize once again for letting patients, our universities and the medical profession down in the biggest possible way;

Sincerely,

The three principal investigators of vested interest psychiatry who have now handed back their professorships and more

In conclusion, we appear to be entering the type of shake-up in the field that Thomas Kuhn referred to as a “paradigm shift.”7 All of the elements are there.

A well-established concept about a phenomenon fails to account for a growing number of non-conforming bits of evidence. The examination of the bits of evidence reveals a new theoretical model that better explains the phenomenon.

Lastly, the resistance by the established community (in this case the medical community) to give up the old paradigm generates attacks on those who promulgate the new theoretical model, dismissal of the evidence that does not fit the old paradigm, and dogmatic rigidity. Only with great effort is the new paradigm recognized and accepted as correct. We shall see...

"Plenty of people are still dying of diseases which other people do not believe." (Dr. M.N.C. Dukes).CBT and GET for ME: "There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity."

Robertson Davies

THE NICEGUIDELINES BLOG VERSUS THE NICEGUIDELINES

These are NOT the NICEGuidelines. This is "The NICEGUIDELINES BLOG." What are the differences:

The NICE Guidelines are biased publications based on the GOBSART (Good Old Boys Sitting Around a Table) approach.

This Blog however is not only evidence based but also uses critical reading to judge papers and articles. I also use common sense and listen to others. And finally I read both psychiatric and medical evidence and opinions from around the world to come to a conclusion.

I’m not sponsored by anybody or paid by whatever company as seems to be the norm with many psycho people who publish the same article almost on a weekly base.

So if you value an opinion, formed as a result of participating in many ME activities, for example being bed bound for years, you have come to the right BLOG. All these activities have allowed me to form an opinion as a Doctor and as a Patient. And that is important as the voice of the latter is discarded by many including NICE.

If you don’t read this blog, you will miss out on “accredited” medical education. If you do read it, you may actually become a doctor who doesn’t stop thinking or forgets to ask critical questions. Many good things, including satisfied patients are at your command.

So, if you arrived here for the straightforward GOBSART approach, I will disappoint you. If you are interested in forming your own opinion about ME, and other interesting things, read on!

About Dr. Speedy.

I am a Family Physician or GP as it is called in Australia or the UK. I am also an ME patient unfortunately. Bedbound that is. So at the moment I’m in private practice so to speak. I’ve got only one patient, ME, or is it me?

I graduated as a doctor a long time ago, and I am the founder and editor of The NICEGUIDELINES BLOG, an internet based ME BLOG that is devoted to critical reading and cheering you or ME up.

I have the following conflict of interest: I would like to get better and see that the wasting of public money on CBT (talk therapy for a neurological disease, really helpful) and other silly therapies for ME stops, and will be used in better ways.

My goal has always been to help, and if possible, cure patients. With this disease you will soon find out that many psychiatrists and psychologists are only in it to make money and get their name in the spotlight. And what happens to and with the patients is irrelevant.

I stand to benefit both mentally, physically and also financially if this silliness would stop, and I would get my health back, and I can go back to work and have a normal life again. Please evaluate my postings with this in mind! And remember, there are also (lots of) psychiatrists and psychologists who haven’t switched their brain off.